Takin’ inventory edition

Aside from the obvious listening-ahead I have to do, I’ve been trying to go back and dig up things that I’ve just had sitting on my CD rack and hard drive and ignored for ages. I’ve also not been getting to as many shows as I should, but I plan to fix that over the next week or so.

-Iron Thrones, Visions Of Light: Twin Cities metal with a polish that makes the riffs gleam.

-Deftones, White Pony: If someone had just told me that some of Deftones’ songs provide a missing link between Jawbox and Tool, I’d have been on this a lot sooner.

-Akimbo, Harshing Your Mellow: I’ll fall back on this when I need some good noisy gut-squirmy fun.

-Chris Pureka, How I Learned To See In The Dark and Jason Collett, Rat A Tat Tat: Both things I might be reviewing, both proof that you can make a sturdy singer-songwriter type of album and still get creative with the arrangements. Not that they’re ultimately all that alike, I’ve just had both on in the car this past week.

-Ted Leo And The Pharmacists, The Brutalist Bricks: The odd thing is that even though he’s one of my all-around favorites, it always takes me a fair bit of work to get into each individual record. So I’ve yet to see where this ranks in my Ted hierarchy. It’d be tough to unseat Hearts Of Oak, though.

-Oscar-Nominated Shorts: Every year, the local Sundance theater screens the live-action and animated shorts up for Oscars. I’m previewing this for work soon, and I can definitely say that “The New Tenants” is the funniest film I’ve seen this year. Actually Oscar Shorts is my one reason not to be annoyed with the Oscars. It’s turned me on to some hilarious and soul-crushingly empathetic films.

-Hanah Jon Taylor at Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse, Feb. 13: Hanah, who I mentioned last week, played two improvised sets with Harrison Bankhead on bass, Vincent Davis on drums, and Biff Blumfumgagne on a variety of strings and effects gadgets. The entire finish of it changed so much from piece to piece. I especially loved how Bankhead charged into the rhythms, but all four played with elegant curiosity.